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Despite the extensive research on the determinants of audit pricing in both public and private settings, there is a lack of research about the differences in audit fees between voluntary audits and mandatory audits. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap.

First, a theoretical framework is developed to justify differences in audit pricing between voluntary and mandatory audits. Next, using a sample of Spanish private small and medium enterprises (SMEs) running from 2009 to 2014, the authors empirically test whether the fees charged for voluntary audits differ from those charged for mandatory ones. The authors also examine whether the premium observed among large auditors is persistent in the SME setting, and whether this premium differs depending on whether the audits are voluntary or mandatory.

Although a preliminary analysis does not report significant differences in pricing between voluntary and mandatory audits, additional analyses using samples restricted by company size show that voluntary audits are charged with a premium. The authors observe a premium related to large auditors, and find no significant differences in the audit pricing of Big 4 auditors depending on the mandatory/voluntary nature of the audit, but the premium associated with Middle-Tier auditors disappears in the voluntary setting.

This paper contributes to the previous literature by introducing the examination of differences in audit pricing between voluntary and mandatory audits. As far as the authors know, this is the first study to examine the differences in audit pricing between voluntary and mandatory audits. It also elaborates on studies on audit pricing in SMEs.

A pesar de la extensa investigación sobre los determinantes de los honorarios de auditoría tanto en el entorno de las empresas cotizadas como de las no cotizadas, existe poca investigación sobre las diferencias en los honorarios entre las auditorías voluntarias y las obligatorias. El presente estudio aborda esta carencia.

En primer lugar, se desarrolla un marco teórico que trata de justificar diferencias en el precio de la auditoría entre auditorías voluntarias y obligatorias. Después, usando una muestra de pymes españolas no cotizadas para el período 2009–2014, testamos empíricamente si los honorarios cargados en las auditorías voluntarias difieren de los cargados en las auditorías obligatorias. Examinamos también si la prima observada entre los grandes auditores en el entorno de las pymes es persistente, y si esta prima difiere en función de si la auditoría es voluntaria u obligatoria.

Aunque el análisis preliminar no reporta diferencias significativas en el precio de la auditoría entre auditorías voluntarias y obligatorias, análisis adicionales usando muestras restringidas por el tamaño de las compañías muestran que las auditorías voluntarias soportan una prima con respecto a las obligatorias. Observamos también una prima relacionada con los auditores grandes y medianos, y no encontramos diferencias significativas en el precio de la auditoría para las Big 4 en función de la naturaleza obligatoria/voluntaria de la auditoría, mientras que la prima asociada con los auditores medianos desaparece en el entorno voluntario.

El estudio contribuye a la literatura previa al introducir el análisis de las diferencias en el precio de la auditoría entre auditorías voluntarias y obligatorias. Hasta donde sabemos, éste es el primer estudio que examina las diferencias de precio entre ambos entornos. El estudio también extiende la literatura previa sobre los honorarios de auditoría en las pymes.

The purpose of this paper explores whether cost audits as governance mechanism affected the trust of the users of financial statements and whether they provide the benefits intended by regulators.

The research method involved unstructured open‐ended face‐to‐face interviews with cost auditors in practice, mid‐ to high‐level accounts and finance executives of companies and investors. Twenty‐three interviews were conducted over a five‐week period from December 2004 to January 2005 in Kolkata city of India. The selection of respondents was purposive, to explore the attitudes of these three groups towards mandatory cost audit.

Mandatory cost audit in India has not enhanced the level of trust of investors and preparers of financial statements also have the opinion. It has not brought those benefits expected by regulators.

It is suggested following the findings of this paper that future research should carefully consider the usefulness and cost and benefit aspects of the mandatory cost audit in India.

This is a pioneering study providing an in‐depth analysis of mandatory cost auditing in India.

Mandatory auditor firm rotation (mandatory rotation) has been a controversial issue in the United States for many decades. Mandatory rotation has been considered at various times as a means of improving auditor independence. For example, in the United States, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has considered mandatory rotation as a solution to the independence problem (PCAOB, 2011) and the European Parliament approved legislation that will require mandatory rotation in the near future (Council of European Union, 2014). The concept of implementing a mandatory rotation policy has been encouraged by some constituents of audited financial statements and rejected by other constituents of audited financial statements. Although there are apparent pros and cons of such a policy, the developmental process of such a policy in this country has not necessarily been an open-democratic, objective process. Universal mandatory rotation may or may not be the ideal solution; however, an open-democratic, objective process is needed to facilitate the development of a solution that considers the needs of all major stakeholders of audited financial statements – not simply accounting firms and public companies, but also investors. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine key issues relating to mandatory rotation and to encourage and stimulate future research and ongoing dialogue regarding this issue, in spite of efforts by certain constituents to silence the issue. This paper provides an overview of the various reasons, including practical, theoretical, political, and self-motivated reasons, why a mandatory rotation policy has not been implemented in the United States in order to address the potential conflict of interest between the auditor and client. This paper will also discuss how some deliberations of mandatory rotation have been flawed. The paper concludes with a summary of key issues along with two approaches for regulators, policy makers, and academics to consider as ways to improve the process and address auditor independence. The authors are not advocating for any specific solution; however, we are advocating for a more objective, unified approach and for the dialogue regarding auditor rotation to continue.

This paper aims to investigate whether close auditor-client relationships affect audit quality over the tenure of the audit partner and the potential role of partner rotation in mitigating this effect.

Using the Chinese mandatory audit partner rotation setting, the authors identify the existence of a close auditor-client relationship if the audit partner tenure with a client is larger than the audit firm tenure with that client. The sample period (1998–2009) is divided into voluntary and mandatory rotation periods when examining the effects of audit partner tenure on audit quality for the normal and close auditor-client relationship subsamples, respectively. The authors also conduct a propensity score matching analysis to address a selection issue.

The paper finds that under the voluntary partner rotation regime, audit quality decreases with audit partner tenure for the subsample with close auditor-client relationships, whereas this effect is not shown in the normal relationship subsample. However, audit quality no longer declines with audit partner tenure under the mandatory partner rotation regime.

This is the first study that directly examines the effect of audit partner tenure on audit quality associated with close auditor-client relationships under the voluntary and mandatory partner rotation regimes.

In recent international debates on auditing regulation, Spain has assumed a real prominence as a claimed practical example of where a policy of mandatory audit firm rotation did not work and was duly abolished. This study aims to provide an analysis of the implementation and subsequent removal of mandatory audit firm rotation in Spain in the 1990s.

This takes the form of historical analysis; the evidence in the paper derives from congressional hearings, financial newspapers and documents produced by the professional associations of auditors in Spain.

This paper demonstrates that at no stage was mandatory rotation of audit firms ever enforced on Spanish auditors. Further, the revision and subsequent removal of the Spanish law on mandatory audit firm rotation emerge as a rather politicized process, with no evident reference being made in the process of legislative reform to Spanish auditing experiences. The analysis also reveals that at the very time that Spain was being cited internationally for rejecting mandatory audit firm rotation, Spanish political parties and regulators were debating whether to “re‐introduce” such a regulation.

The clear implication of the paper is that considerable caution needs to be taken in today's international‐auditing arena, when analyzing the standpoints and claims made by professional associations and the evidence they provide to support their arguments for and against regulatory reform.

This study aims to examine the causal relationship between mandatory CSR disclosure and financial audit efficiency.

The authors use the unique institutional setting of China, where a subset of listed firms are mandated to disclose their corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. The authors use propensity score matching and difference-in-differences approaches to compare audit efficiency in the pre- and post-mandatory CSR disclosure periods between the treatment and control groups. The regression models are estimated with robust standard errors clustered at the firm level.

This study finds that following China’s adoption of the mandatory disclosure of CSR, audit report lags decreased by 6% on average, suggesting that audit efficiency improved greatly following mandatory CSR disclosure. Moreover, this association is stronger when firms have better CSR performance, higher CSR report preparation costs, more earnings management before disclosure regulations and better internal controls and when firms belong to high-profile industries and in Big 4 (Big 10) accounting firms. Moreover, neither audit quality nor audit fees decrease when shorter audit lags occur for firms with mandatory CSR disclosures. Overall, the evidence suggests that mandatory CSR disclosure has a positive effect on audit efficiency and that the improvement of audit efficiency does not come as a consequence of reducing audit fees or deteriorating audit quality.

The results reported in this study have practical and policy implications for policymakers, accounting firms and auditors to pay more attention to CSR information.

This study provides evidence of the causal relationship between mandatory CSR disclosure regulation and audit efficiency. It enriches the research on audit service production efficiency from the perspective of nonfinancial information disclosure.

As a consequence of the global financial and economic crisis, the European Commission recently reformed the audit market. One objective was to restore public trust in the auditing profession and thus to enhance the audit function. This study investigates whether perceptions of auditor independence and audit quality are influenced by audit firm rotation, auditor retention and joint audits, because regulators argue that these instruments can improve auditor independence and audit quality. Therefore, we conduct an experiment with bank directors and institutional investors in Germany. The results indicate a negative main effect for joint audits on perceived auditor independence, and that a rotation cycle of 24 years marginally significantly impairs participant perceptions of audit quality, compared to a rotation cycle of only ten years. Besides the main effects, planned contrast tests suggest a negative interaction between rotation and joint audit on participant perceptions of auditor independence. Moreover, a negative interaction effect is revealed between rotation after 24 years and retention on perceptions of audit quality. It is particularly noteworthy that we failed to identify a positive impact of the regulatory measures taken or supported by the European Commission on perceptions of auditor independence and audit quality.

While in real life organisations typically undertake in a holistic fashion the functions for which they were established, accounting for the ensuing activities of those functions traditionally proceeds on the basis of a sharp dichotomy between their external and internal aspects. As a consequence, there is a well‐established, worldwide tradition that only the external “wing” of accounting is subject to mandatory audit; this article explores the idea of extending this to the internal “wing”. Conceptually the idea does not seem preposterous but compelling. The two wings of accounting constitute not a dichotomy but a dialectic: each presupposes the other, so cannot validly be given different treatment. However, for an institution, a regulatory framework for internal matters may be incompatible with a socioeconomic regime founded on individual autonomy and the spirit of enterprise. India′s pioneering imposition of mandatory cost audit is reviewed and the deep institutional dilemma that surrounds the whole issue is discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect that a regime of mandatory audit firm rotation would have on audit quality.

Using two measures of audit quality, being the propensity to issue a going‐concern report and the level of discretionary accruals, the paper examines the switching patterns of clients in their current voluntary switching capacity, and the levels of audit quality.

The main finding is that audit quality increases with audit firm tenure, when proxied by the propensity to issue a going‐concern opinion, and is unaffected when proxied by the level of discretionary expenses. Given the additional costs associated with switching auditors, it is concluded that there are minimal, if any, benefits of mandatory audit firm rotation.

A limitation of this study is that only actual audit quality is examined. While the results suggest that actual audit quality is associated with the length of audit tenure, the perception of audit quality is not addressed, which may increase with audit firm rotation.

The results go against the move towards mandatory audit firm rotation, and suggest that other initiatives may need to be considered to address concerns about auditor independence and audit quality.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between auditor industry specialization and accounting quality in the European Union (EU).

This study employs a difference-in-differences design and explores audit quality from different industry specialist perspectives and different accounting standard regimes. Specifically, this study examines accounting quality among audits performed by non-industry specialists, EU member country-level industry specialists (EUM-level), EU community-level industry specialists (EUC-level), as well as joint industry specialists.

This study finds evidence of an improvement in accounting quality among audits performed by non-industry specialists post-IFRS. There is also evidence of an improvement in accounting quality among audits performed by EUC-level industry specialists post-IFRS. In addition, accounting quality among audits performed by EUM-level industry specialists seems to be greater than that of audits performed by non-industry specialists in either the pre-IFRS period or the post-IFRS period. Overall, the mandatory adoption of IFRS in the EU appears to be associated with an improvement in accounting quality among some auditor groups.

Industry specialization and accounting quality are not directly observable constructs; this study inevitably employs proxy measures for both. The findings of this study are location-specific and apply to mandatory IFRS adopters only.

This study informs regulators with respect to the importance of industry specialist auditors and financial reporting quality, particularly within the context of the EU. The findings suggest that industry specialists were a significant accounting quality determinant during the mandatory adoption of IFRS. The findings have implications for regulators in the EU and beyond.

This study is among the first to investigate the impact of auditor specialization on accounting quality in the EU, particularly in connection with the adoption of IFRS.